Learning in Dreams. Is it possible?

I have tried to look up similar stories to this one I have but cant find much.

A while back, when I was in middle school, skateboarding was all the rage. How good you were at skating pretty much dictated the social level of coolness you were at among your peers. So in another words, it meant everything.
So, I was never really too good at it but anytime I was talking to any other kids I would have to BS about the certain tricks I was able to do, even though I couldn't do half of them. The one trick I was trying to learn at this time was called a "kick flip" and it is where you jump in the air with your board and get your skateboard to do a barrel roll-like spin, then land back on the board. I was never able to land this trick but I could get the skateboard to spin.
One week this kid planned on coming over after school to skateboard with me and I had already told him, with confidence, that I knew how to do a kick flip. I was going to be exposed for a fraud if I wasn't able to perform this trick when he came over the next day.
So this is where the main point of my story comes. I had a dream that night before he came. In this dream I was in my friends garage. We were skateboarding and I was doing the trick in my dream. Over and over. It was vivid. I could feel how I moved my legs. I could feel how I was landing back on the ground solidly. It was so natural. I didnt really think much of it in the dream. I acted as if nothing strange was happening. Then I woke the next morning and the dream was still in my head. I didn't think much of it then either until I went outside before school to skateboard before the bus came. On my first attempt of performing the kick flip, I landed it. I freaked out of course with excitement, ran inside and told my mom and was totally stoked. I was able to do the trick naturally ever since that dream, as though I had known it for quite some time. Thanks to that dream I got to look ultra cool in front of my friend from school later that day!
Has anyone else had a similar experience with learning certain skills in their dreams overnight? I have had similar but not as intense dreams with playing the piano, but I wont get into that now.

It's no secret that some of the greatest discoveries were found in dreams, or at least inspired by dreams.

reply to post by xiphias


Yeah. The most similar thing I can think of off the top of my head are stories of people hearing music in their dreams, and from there they bring that music into this reality. Or maybe even certain books were inspired by dreams, but I haven't really heard any stories where maybe a person woke up and all of a sudden knew how to play an instrument. Something to that degree.

I think alot of dreams are tests. They allow you to relive situations you have been through, and react differently in an idealistic fashion. Then you have those which are designed to test you on your biggest fears. How would you react if confronted by something terrifying and you couldn't move? In real life you would have much more freedom of choice and therefore you could react differently. But at least you have prepared for the terrifying encounter whilst immobilised...

So i suppose in this sense you are learning different responses to challenges you may be presented in life.

Great thread! I had something similar happen during summer break between 8th and 9th grade for me.

It was just a guitar playing trick but it was supremely awesome that it worked!

REM sleep is the "dreaming" aspect of sleep.
I am not talking out of my ass but i don't have a link to the information as i saw it in some dream movie documentry a while ago and i have bad memory with movie titles

Rem sleep happens for around half an hour at a time, and happens every hour or two during your sleep.
It showed that your brain doesn't actually "sleep" or hibernate or relax, but infact is working at awake levels revealing that it's actually using brain power to solve problems. The documentry concluded that with speaking to the dreamer after waking him up mid way through REM sleep and asking him what he remembered, he was in a learning process and/or examination of what he did during that day.

(Poor guy had to wake up like 10 times in the middle of the night for this experiment )

reply to post by Anttyk47


Hahaha. I keep meaning to experiment with myself one night by waking myself up every couple hour or so with my alarm clock and then quickly writing down anything I can think of. I keep procrastinating because I'd rather just sleep of course.

The purpose of dreaming is to "Sort out" things in your head that you are worrying about in real life. If you are really scared or worried about something then chances are that you'll dream about it repeatable until your subconscious manages to sort the problem out in your dream. After something has been resolved in a dream you often feel a lot better in real life. The dream function is basically your own personal shrink helping you get through life and working out problems in your life that you can't work out with the logical part of your brain when you are awake.

So yes you can and do learn in dreams. Your case sounds quite interesting, I'm guessing you were lucid dreaming about this issue because you were worried about it. The fact that you actually nailed a trick in your dream really fascinates me! I always have dreams about fighting so I wonder if they have improved my fighting skills.

Thanks for posting your story its very interesting! Star and flag.

Hmm interesting had alittle dig about and found this article from Time magazine...

As Freud saw it, dreams provide psychic gratification for suppressed desires. Researchers in the growing science of sleep-watching suspect that their mysterious function is much broader than that. The latest findings, as presented to the annual meeting of the Association for the Psychophysiological Study of Sleep, are beginning to confirm the link, hitherto experimentally unproved, between dreams and conscious functioning. In dreaming, the experts now surmise, the healthy mind brings its emotional experience to bear on the stresses of the day and forges new mental mechanisms for dealing with them when they recur.

Source:
Time Magazine

Quite interesting...hope this adds alittle more to this discussion

reply to post by TechUnique


Yes! I also have many dreams about fighting or having to defend myself from groups of thugs. I always manage to become some kung fu master in my dreams and beat everyone up. I dont think I want to test that one out though!

reply to post by allourep


i've "learned" or figured out a couple things in dreams throughout my life. during dreaming your mind puts information together in new and different ways and shows it to you. anytime that happens there's a possibility of learning, as in, coming away with new ideas.

yes.

in one way you can "learn" what you may have been studying outside of dreams at an advanced level; like downloading.
and in another way what you have neglected to study pertaining you own lifes individual knowledge is presented in a dream to be known or "learned" upon wakeup.

in the first way the learning will be as instant and impossible to stop. in the second way the revelation that comes from a symbolic dream associated with an individuals knowledge will create impossible to avoid contact with personal knowledge of the self; thus "learning".

if you are attempting to "learn" something that is entirely unknown to yourself i think maybe this degree of unknown to self is relative to your own cognizance of the subject or lack of focus on the particular subject. when the degree is aligned properly into your field of conscious view by means of direction into a dream or direction from a dream into your waking state; somehow "learning" is accomplished.

we may differ on this subject if you are to assume that learning is a process that involves coming into contact with information of which you had no present data sets.

as an addendum to my prior post; it is impossible to learn with and without dreaming.

if i go through a cycle of events predicated upon my own self conscious called a "dream" and fail to reenter my waking state, i will never be presented with the contrasting thoughts that are of a non symbolic nature that will create new "learn"/knowledge. and in token if i study a subject and never allow my waking state to enter "dream" i will never know that which i have been "studying".

this makes death seem very sad; as life as well for a lost soul.

... I see dreams as a peak into a parrellel .. dimension or other self in another galaxy in another possible reality which is connected tot he individual whom is having the dream the dream and the out come of it is linked to you in some way... a possible mixture of outcomes or thoughts from other selves linked we are to them all .. I believe and that me travel to these dimensions .... all are part of the same matrix you could say of the universe and we die in one dimension only to be drawn into another ... ... it is only a thought but it is one I seem to lean towards ... I say make the best of your dreams and decisions in them .... may be linked to your soul and life itself.... the here after .. the after life....

Some dreams are just dreams, often the way of the psyche to deal with everyday stress and emotions. But sometimes I have dreams where I KNOW I'm being taught something, something important, by aliens or some sort of advanced beings, and as long as I'm asleep, it's crystal clear in my mind. I desperately try to cling onto those teachings when I'm starting to wake up... but as soon as I'm fully awake, it's gone. I console myself with the thought that when I need the knowledge, it will be there...

Didn't Wankel discover how to build the rotary engine in a dream?
2nd

It's possible for me to learn in my dreams. If it wasn't for me lucid dreaming I would never have interest in government and economics. As well technology and so forth. In my dreams I have discussed new feet's of future technology that I must create!

Saturday morning I dreamt that I won the lottery, 10 mil, and have this experience of going into the local "Max" Mart, checking my ticket, and voila, a life changing experience, and this dream was long, and very vivid.

What's strange about this, is that later that day, I went to the Max, and found out that at that very same store, earlier that day, yesterday, to be precise (same day I had the dream), a guy went in there to check a Lotto Max ticket (he'd played 2 quick picks) only to discover that he'd won 50,000,000.00 (fifty million). So what I'd dreamt, while it didn't happen to me, it happened to someone else, just like I'd dreamed, like I was sharing that other person's actual experience at some level. Very strange, very coincidental.

Needless to say, I've now purchased a Lotto Max ticket from the same clerk who sold that guy his, ya never know..?!

reply to post by allourep


It sounds like you are a very intelligent person allourep. Nikola Tesla used to be able to see his inventions in his mind before he built them, and how they would work. Your dreams are similar to what he stated.

Nikola Tesla was so interested in dreams that he wanted to make a camera that could see into a persons eyes and film what the person was dreaming; a very special camera should be possible to do this, and I suspect someone will do this one day.

reply to post by allourep


The most modern theory about dreams - and this is coming from what I've heard being said by top dream research scientists on a TV documentary - is that they are exactly what you describe. They are a way that the human mind acclimates itself to new situations and works through problems, essentially like running a computer simulation of situations you might encounter, or have encountered and need more practice in.

So, if were a cave man and you spent a lot of your time hunting, you would have probably dreamt a lot about hunting, perhaps doing some pretty extreme and dangerous things in you dream that you might not have the guts or skill, yet, in real life to try. It's like mentally preparing yourself for something you've never yet tried or haven't yet succeeded at, so that next time you'll have more experience or confidence for it. And, like in your situation, it seems to work. These dream experiences seem to really help people work out these situations and perform better.

Things like nightmares - being chases by a bear or a psycho killer with a knife, let's say - are the same sort of thing. Though we don't usually need to run though such an experience for our survival, anymore, our brain is still wired for it, so we have a tendency to "experience" those things in our dream state to prepare ourselves for the time when it might actually happen.